1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an operation data display device for displaying information on an operation state of a robot, which performs operations such as arc welding, on a display screen.
2. Description of the Related Art
As well known in the art, an industrial robot performs a series of predetermined operations such as arc welding operations by successively moving a tool mounted on the robot and making input/output of signals for the operations in accordance with an operation program taught to the robot in advance.
It has been adopted to a method of recording data concerning robot operations in operating the robot in time series and analyzing a state of the robot operation referring to the recorded data after finishing the operations at appropriate opportunity (for example, each time when operations of one lot are completed), so as to utilize the analysis for the robot operations thereafter. The data on each of the robot operations are displayed on a display screen of the display device in the form of a graph for each operation of the robot for the analysis of the data.
In the above conventional method, the analysis on each robot operation can be performed easily based on the displayed data, but it is difficult to grasp the whole tendency of a series of robot operations and it is laborious for an operator to grasp a general tendency of the plurality of robot operations.
An object of the present invention is to provide an operation data display device capable of grasping a tendency of operation data on a plurality of operations performed by a robot and also easily analyzing the whole operation data.
An operation data display device of the present invention comprises: a robot controller for controlling a robot to perform operations in accordance with an operation program; and a data processing device connected with the robot controller.
According to an aspect of the present invention, the robot controller may include means for obtaining operation data on an operation state of the robot for each operation of the robot and storing the operation data in time series, and means for transferring the stored operation data to said data processing device. The data processing device may include storing means for storing the operation data transferred from the robot controller, a display device for providing a frame of picture on a display screen and means for displaying a plurality of representations of the stored operation data on a plurality of robot operations in the form of graphs of reduced size in one frame on the display screen of the display device.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the robot controller may include means for successively obtaining operation data on an operation state of the robot for each operation of the robot and means for transferring the operation data to said data processing device. The data processing device may include storing means for storing the operation data for each operation transferred from the robot controller in time series, a display device for providing a frame of picture on a display screen and means for displaying a plurality of representations of the operation data on a plurality of robot operations in the form of graphs of reduced size in one frame on the display screen of the display device.
The data processing device may include means for allowing selection of one of the plurality of representations of the operation data and displaying only the selected one in the form of a graph of enlarged size in one frame on the display screen. The data processing device may further include means for displaying a plurality of representations of the stored operation data in the form of icons with indications of sequence or time/date of the operations in one frame on the display screen.
Further, the data processing device may include means for allowing addition of a mark indicating abnormality of the operation data on the representation thereof, means for sorting the representations of the operation data in time series in one frame on the display screen and means for displaying only the representations of the abnormal operation data in one frame on the display screen.
The operations performed by the robot are not particularly restricted. The operations may be arc welding operations as typical example and in this case, the operation data may be indicative of welding current in the arc welding operation.